YouTube has created celebrities like beauty adviser Michelle Phan and the band Boyce Avenue. Now a startup is offering them, and others, more control over their audience, and potentially more money, through customized mobile apps.

The startup, Victorious, is led by three former Google executives. It launched Wednesday, having recruited several high-profile YouTubers to use its app to post photos and videos, and communicate with fans. The apps will allow the creators to generate revenue from in-app purchases, new ad formats, and merchandise sales.

“These creators have audiences that are enormous but fragmented,” says Bing Chen, Victorious’s chief creative officer, a YouTube alum. “They want to be able to control their own destiny.”

Phan has nearly seven million subscribers to her beauty channel, making her one of YouTube’s top celebrities. She says it’s hard to manage her fan base across multiple social-media platforms including Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, in addition to YouTube. With her own mobile app, she hopes to reach her biggest fans directly.

Daniel Enrique Manzano, who with his two brothers forms the popular YouTube band Boyce Avenue, says the mobile app should give the band more control over displaying information to fans. Manzano says the group is frustrated by how difficult it is for its nearly six million subscribers to find its touring schedule while watching YouTube.

Manzano says he hopes the app will help fans “enjoy our music in a less fleeting way.” He also hopes to make more money, as advertisers target the band’s audience. Ad rates on YouTube can suffer because of the huge volume of videos for advertisers.

YouTube recently launched a program, called Google Preferred, which it hopes can help solve this problem by selling ads against certain popular videos separately from those on the rest of its site.

A YouTube spokesman declined to comment.

Victorious’s apps are still in development. Phan and Manzano anticipate theirs will be available in a few months.

Tati Westbrook, aka GlamLifeGuru on YouTube, says having her own mobile app will mean not getting “lost in the shuffle” on YouTube and allow her to offer more specialized content and features.

“There are limitations with YouTube,” she says. “Some of the essence I want to get across is lost because it’s their platform, it’s not my platform.”